In today’s totally screwed up government – it is clear that we are out of money. California is no exception – with a GDP that ranks us in the top 10 in the world, we cannot manage our resources well enough to have good cash flow. There is something terribly wrong with this. As such, the state has done a stealthy job of taking away things that we don’t really see. Not like raising the sales tax rates or raising income tax – they have slowly and methodically taken away benefits in programs like Prop 13, Prop 60 and Prop 90. I think everyone in California knows what Prop 13 is – but for those that don’t – it was a grass roots movement to help homeowners keep control over the rising costs of property taxes. It was passed in the 80’s and is still in place today. Introducing Prop 60 and 90 later allowed people to move to another county within California and take their Prop 13 tax basis with them. This allowed homeowners to purchase a property for equal or lesser value in another county. Fast forward to today and you can see that most of the recipients of Prop 13 are Seniors.
The problem is that only 9 counties accept the Prop 13 transfer from another county. So if a Senior wishes to move to another county to live closer to their family – they are not always able to because their property tax basis is not accepted in that new county.
We need to be aware and careful with our legislators and make sure, what appears to be small things that they remove to balance the budget, don’t end up really being big things to segments of our population.